Service function chaining provides the ability to define an ordered list of network services (e.g. firewall, NAT, video-optimizer, etc.) that are linked together in a network to create a service chain. Such service-chaining is advantageous to network service providers because they can direct selected network data packets, or traffic, to particular network service functions, rather than directing all traffic through all network service functions. Furthermore, service function chaining facilitates addition of new services or functions without affecting existing ones. Network Service Header (NSH) is a draft protocol before the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). NSH draft protocol specifies a header that may be inserted between the transport header and payload of a network data packet to enable it to traverse a service function chain or path. Currently, service function path performance monitoring uses hardware probes or vProbes to monitor network performance. These probes typically use standards, such as RFC2544, Y. 1731 and Y. 1564, that do not adequately test the performance of actual subscriber traffic in the user-plane because they utilize test traffic rather than real subscriber traffic flows.